Comments

> Today was Big Bang Day at CERN as the worlds largest science experiment was turned on.
Anything to do with Plasma? (pun absolutely intended ;)) I guess, since they are looking at the structure of an atom, that it does have some loose relation to plasma.
> We are pleased that like all world class physicists the first ever ATLAS results come from KDE.
Cool!
> Just as good, the world has not yet been sucked into a black hole.
Even cooler!

Thanks very much for the reply. I just can't wait for the next update, guess I will have sleepless nights until next week ;)
BTW, you guys are doing an excellent job, even the present development version (- my nVidia card) is quite stable.

why should the world come to an end? in case you trust the biologist who believes he understands physics better than physicists well i can only recommend that you trust your gardener in case you ever need open heart surgery. not willing to do that? then trust physicists ... the biologist's interpretation of general relativity - by the way - has been proven wrong a LONG time ago. in case you were kidding i'm sorry :-) there've been just too many people complaining for no reason so i wanted to make this one clear.

as for the mixed environment: I had a chance to do a semester thesis at cern and yes they use a lot of linux but also a lot of windows (though vista is incredibly unpopular [quote: "get that piece of s*** off my computer!]) . the linux versions are often outdated when they're the official releases (scientific linux i think) but a lot of people use different distributions ... judging by the start up sound a LOT of ubuntu... oh and of course my kubuntu laptop :-) [not a representative survey, just personal experience, guys!]

Why would using Linux and KDE cause the experiment to create a black hole, whereas Windows would not. Technically, the KDE they are using (KDE3.5.x), with Linux, is more stable than Windows, so if Linux causes the world to end in a failed experiment, it won't be because of a crash.

Plain daft. The people who are informed on this subject believe that there is a very low probability of creating a black hole. Very low isn't quite low enough, as far as I am concerned, but the reason that this concern, and the reassurance coming from an apparent lack of the end of the world, so far, is misguided is that all they have done so far is to run a few protons around in each direction and check the detectors, largely by looking for background events.

Not only have there been no collisions, so far, but all of the testing has been done at low energies and if low energies were going to end the world, something like LEP or Tevatron would have done it years ago.

This is a significant milestone in project management terms, but it really isn't grounds for reassurance.

Who cares if they create some black holes? By the same theories, they have been created over and over for a few billion years here on Earth via inbound radiation from space... and will continue to occur regardless of what CERN does. This just lets scientists know where the interaction will be so they can watch it with carefully calibrated instruments. There's nothing new here that doesn't occur all over the place in this neck of the galaxy, it's just in a nice building so we can know when and where it will happen and watch it closely.

I'll disappoint you but its not KDE or Gnome. All computers in Control Center run Windows XP...All these applications you have seen are Java applications integrated to a Netbeans-based platform. They look so ugly cause they use the old AWT toolkit instead of Swing. Cern is a Java world ;)
I love KDE and I'm Kubuntu user :D

Sorry I can't help you. All the computers in Cern Control Center (CCC) run Windows XP, but I remember some people working on CERN Scientific Linux via Remote Desktop. I dont know about ATLAS control room, but for CCC this is the reality. I wish they had CERN Scientific Linux to all computers :)

The machines in the ATLAS Control Room are running CERN Scientific Linux 4, and a KDE session. The policy is that the whole ATLAS Control Room runs Linux exclusively.
They use KIOSK to trim the desktop to their needs. There are many Java applications, (including the ATLANTIS event display) . The "slow control" system (that "steers" controls/monitors the detector) is built on top of the commercial, Qt3 (KDE3)-based Scada System, called PVSS (produced by Austrian company called ETM), and can run on Linux and Windows. Certain applications that need to execute on Windows (such as OPC-based drivers for various hardware pieces), run on ... Windows; they are available via Remote Desktop.

I even use Kubuntu on one of them the other uses Slackware with KDE 3.5
and the little EEE uses Mandriva with KDE. Seems that Mandriva works
right outa de box on the EEE. None other works as good.. Suse on the other hand
well do I need to say., It has issues!!!

Once the supercollider is up and running, CERN scientists estimate that if the Standard Model is correct, a single Higgs boson may be produced every few hours. At this rate, it may take up to three years to collect enough data to discover the Higgs boson (search engine optimization) unambiguously. Similarly, it may take one year or more before sufficient results concerning supersymmetric particles have been gathered to draw meaningful conclusions.
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